street would be again
filled with a jostling crowd of sedan chairmen, footmen, and linkboys;
she could almost smell the torches and hear the cries of their bearers.
It gave her much of a shock to realise how beauties, lovers, linkboys,
and all had disappeared from the face of the earth, as if they had
never been. She wondered why Londoners were so indifferent to the
stones Soho had to tell. Then she fell to speculating upon which the
house might be where her blood-thirsty ancestor had lived; also, if it
had ever occurred to him that one of his descendants, a girl, would be
wandering about Soho with scarce enough for her daily needs. In time,
she grew to love the old houses, which seemed ever to mourn their
long-lost grandeur, which still seemed full of echoes of long-dead
voices, which were ill-reconciled to the base uses to which they were
now put. Perhaps she, also, loved them because she grew to compare
their fallen state with that of her own family; it seemed that she and
they had much in common; and shared misfortunes beget sympathy.

Thus Mavis worked and dreamed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SPIDER AND FLY

One night, Mavis went back to "Dawes'" earlier than usual. She was
wearing the boots bought with her carefully saved pence; these pinched
her feet, making her weary and irritable. She wondered if she would
have the bedroom to herself while she undressed. Of late, the queenly
Miss Potter had given up going out for the evening and returning at all
hours in the morning. Her usual robust health had deserted her; she was
constantly swallowing drugs; she would go out for long walks after shop
hours, to return about eleven, completely exhausted, when she would
hold long, whispered conversations with her friend Miss Allen.

Mavis was delighted to find the room vacant. The odour of drugs mingled
with the other smells of the chamber, which she mitigated, in some
measure, by opening the window as far as she was able. She pulled off
her tight boots, enjoying for some moments a pleasurable sense of
relief; then she tumbled into bed, soon to fall asleep. She was
awakened by the noise of voices raised in altercation. Miss Potter and
Miss Impett were having words. The girls were in bed, although no one
had troubled to turn off the flaring jet. As they became more and more
possessed with the passion for effective retort, Mavis saw vile looks
appearing on their faces: these obliterated all traces of youth and
comeliness, subst